This article is intended for Pipeliner Admins and Power Users with a good knowledge of working with Pipeliner features such as Mass Emails and Automatizer.

We're delighted to introduce our new Online Forms feature that lets you create, edit and share web forms/surveys. It's fully integrated with Pipeliner CRM so that you can quickly access and work with your records.

You’ll be able use this new feature to:

To give you some ideas of how to use this new feature in your own business, we’ve created some simple guidelines for working with the following scenarios:

Access the Online Form Manager by clicking on the Tools menu and then selecting Online Forms ⤵

You’ll see a list of all Online Forms regardless of which user created the form ⤵

NOTE: by default, and depending on their User Role, users will only be able to edit Forms that they created.

Click on the “Filter” button in the top right to filter Forms by Owner, Primary Record Type or Status or click into the Search box to use a full-text search or by a Filter ⤵

If you click on a Form to select it, a sidebar will open that contains information about the selected Form ⤵

The Details tab shows basic information about the Form - including Name and Description - as well as simple Form Statistics.

NOTE: to see full statistics about the Form responses, click on the “Show Statistics in CRM” link.

The Responses tab chronologically displays all responses submitted by responders.

The Activity Log tab shows a log about every response that was created

From within the sidebar, users can access the following actions:

Edit

Edit the selected Form if you’re the Online Form Owner or an Online Form Admin (as set in User Roles)

Properties

Add or update the Form name and/or description as well as the Online Form Owner

Get Link

Each form has a public link that can be shared with other users/customers. Make sure that the Form has been activated prior to sharing a link or the recipient will not be able to respond to the Form ⤵

There are three types of links:

Get Embed Code

The generated Embed Code allows your web developers to embed the created Form to any web page ⤵

The Form can be embedded as

This article has more detail of how to generate the keys needed to protect your Online Form when you add it to your website using Javascript.

NOTE: when you are setting up reCAPTCHA for a new domain, it can take between 5-15 minutes to propagate to your online form so please be aware of this before testing. This short lag is on the Google side so cannot be affected by your set up.

Print Responses

Creates and downloads a PDF file of all the individual responses submitted by recipients of the Form ⤵

Export

Export all responses received from recipients of the selected Form to Excel or csv ⤵

Copy

Creates a copy of the selected Form which can then be edited by the Online Form Owner or an Online Form Admin (as set in User Roles)

Delete

Delete the selected Form if you’re the Online Form Owner or an Online Form Admin (as set in User Roles)

Activate/Deactivate

Only active Forms can record responses, so when an Online Form is ready to use, the Owner needs to activate the Form (and wait for responses!). Any inactive form is still live, but it cannot store the responses and any recipients trying to submit a response will see only a static page ⤵

These actions - except Edit - can also be accessed from the toolbar buttons within the Form Manager and the “Create New” option is also available from the toolbar ⤵

Click on the “Create New” button to add a new Online Form ⤵

Fill in the Online Form Name and a Description. Select a Primary record type from the dropdown (choose from Account, Contact, Lead or Opportunity). By default, you’ll be the Online Form Owner but you can change that to a different User if required.

Click on “Create” to open up the Online Form Editor.

When you create a new Online Form, or Edit an existing one, the Online Form Editor will open to allow you to edit and customize the Form ⤵

Every Form includes the following sections:

You can add images to the Form. Clicking on the image area “Click to edit theme settings” will open up a sidebar ⤵

Choose an image to use on your Form. The image file type needs to be one of .png, .jfif, .pjpeg, .jpeg, .pjp, .jpg, .gif. Resize your image to fit within the boundaries and then “Apply” ⤵

Click on “Preview” to see the results of your choices ⤵

Leave the tick in “Show color ribbon” to display a top border above your image in your chosen color.

Leave the tick in “Show question numbers” to display incremental numbers for each field added or uncheck it to remove the numbers.

Click on “Color Schemes” to choose one of the pre-defined color schemes to use for the border and background.

Rather than use pre-defined style, you can click on “Customise Style” to choose your own colors for the Submit button, backgrounds, fonts, borders etc ⤵

Click into the “Header” section to add a Form Title and Description as well as decide if the Header should be visible or not (this might be useful when the form is embedded) ⤵

You can use Rich Text formatting as well as add Personalization markers to insert data from selected Pipeliner records into your Form ⤵

Depending on which “Primary Record Type” was selected when the Form was created, in the left hand panel, you will see a few pre-created Fields that can be added to your Form.

Each field represents a “question” or data value that can be filled in by a recipient of the Form when you send a link or embed the form on a website.

In addition to the pre-created fields, you can create additional custom fields of the following types:

All fields are shared between Forms and can be used only once per Form. You can drag & drop a field from the left hand panel onto your Form ⤵

Click on the three dots icon to Edit a field, Copy it or Delete it ⤵

Add a new field using the “Create New Field” button. If you choose to add a field of type Dropdown, Radio or Multi-select checkbox, as well as the Field Name, you’ll need to specify the values that a recipient of the Form will be able to use when filling in and submitting the Form.

The first option is to choose “Custom values” and then type in the options that should be available for recipients to choose from ⤵

The alternative option is to “tie” the values of your new field to a field that already exists in Pipeliner. This is a great way to ensure that any responses received map directly to a valid option. Choose “Existing Field Values” and then choose the field to map the values from ⤵

Here’s the mapped field from the Accounts Fields tab in Pipeliner showing the values that will be available on the Form for the responder to pick from ⤵

If your new field is any other Type, you’ll just need to enter a Field Name and choose the Type from the list ⤵

We’ve also added a new field type “Rating” for you to use on Online Forms to capture feedback scores ⤵

Once you’ve dragged and dropped a field onto your Form, you can then update the Properties. A field can be:

Click on an individual field to open up the sidebar ⤵

The General tab

Enter a Title and Description for the field. This can be different on each Online Form. You can use Rich Text formatting and insert Personalization Markers into both the Title and Description.

Scrolling down, you’ll be able to select an image to display for each field as well as make the field Visible (on by default), Required or Read-only ⤵

The Values Tab

Click on the Values tab to customize text, placeholders and ranges of the current field. The values are dependent on the field type ⤵

NOTE: Date and Date/Time fields have no Values tab.

The Pre-fill Tab

You can “Enable pre-fill” for each field. This allows you to share the Form link with some answers already populated or filled with default values to help your recipients complete the Form quickly ⤵

Choose between the 2 options to determine how the values will be pre-filled:

Click on the Footer to change the text of the Submit button ⤵

Click on the Settings button to select options to determine the behaviour of the Form ⤵

The On Form Submit tab determines what happens when the Form is submitted by the recipient.

If your Form submission contains a value - Contact’s email address, for example - that can uniquely identify a record already in Pipeliner, you can choose to update that Pipeliner record with additional information or to overwrite existing information. Click on the “Update Record Form” button to set up mappings from your Form fields to fields in Pipeliner ⤵

Click into each field that you want to update with information submitted on the Form response ⤵

NOTE: if the primary purpose of your Form is to update records in Pipeliner, you’ll want to include a field on your Form that is pre-filled from a record (and probably read-only or even made invisible so the data cannot be amended) and this will help ensure that a matching record is found when the Form response is submitted.

If a record in Pipeliner that matches to the submitted Form response cannot be found, you can enable the “Create Record” option. You'd definitely want to leave this option enabled if you don't know who may fill in your form - if you're planning to embed it on your website, for example ⤵

Click on “Create Record Form” to map fields from your Form response to a new record in Pipeliner ⤵

NOTE: the Create/Update form is always the same entity type as the form’s Primary record type.

Enable this option to save the response as a pdf that will then be attached to the Documents tab of the Created or Updated record.

Select from the following response options:

Limit to 1 response - if this is enabled, when the responder submits the Form more than once, they will be prompted to replace a previous response

Check for existing responses - if enabled, the responder will be prompted to replace an existing response OR create a new response when they submit a Form more than once whereas if this option is unchecked, all responses submitted by a user will be saved as new.

Switch this on to send a notification by email when a response is submitted. You can send the response to:

When the submission was successful, choose between:

Show thank you message to display a Thank You page to the responder with your custom message as entered into the Title and Message fields below, noting that you can use Rich Text and personalization options.

Redirect to an external website by entering a custom URL.

The options on this tab allow you to choose how a Form response will be matched to a record in Pipeliner ⤵

There are two options that can be used to identify a record and link it with a submitted response:

Identify by Record ID - when a personalized Form link is sent to a recipient, it will contain the underlying record ID which means that the record can be precisely identified and matched to the response.

Identification by Field on the Record - enable this option and pick a field from your Form that will be used to find an existing record ⤵

NOTE: if multiple matching records are found, the Form response will update the one that has the latest Modified Date.

When a matching record is not identified, and the option to “Create New record” is not enabled - a Form response will be created but it will not be linked to any existing record. The responder will be “Unknown”.

Click on the Preview tab at any time to see the impact of your selections on how the Form will display to the recipients ⤵

If your Form is personalized, choose a record to preview how the Personalization markers will be displayed ⤵

You can swap between the Desktop and Mobile previews ⤵

Once you’ve finished setting up your Form, click on “Save” to save your changes but keep it inactive so you can continue working on it or “Save & Activate” to publish your changes to the web so that responses to the Form can be submitted ⤵

You can also Get Link, Get Embedded Code or Customise Theme by clicking on the three dots icon ⤵

If someone tries to respond to a Form that is not activated, they will receive the following message ⤵

Once your Online Form is activated, you can send the link via a Pipeliner email. Online Forms sent via Pipeliner Emails are tracked in the Online Form Summary under the Sent and Sent Unique statistics.

Click on an email address to start a Standard email (or select a group of records to send a Mass Email). Click on the Online Forms icon to access all Online Forms that are compatible with the type of record that you’re sending the Email from (i.e. if you start your email from a Contact, you’ll see Online Forms where Contact is the Primary Record type) ⤵

Choose the Form you want to send, to insert a link into your email ⤵

Submitted responses are created as a Feed item named “Online Form”. Every response submitted is linked to (related to ) a Primary record and, possibly, secondary records (similarly to Emails) depending on the matching values.

The Primary record linked to the Online Form response is named “Responded By” and you can use this field for filtering or reporting.

Subject to your User Role, you’ll be able to see “Online Form” responses (and Filter them in the Feed View tab options) from the main Feeds menu. Online Form responses are sorted by Response Date in Feeds ⤵

You’ll also be able to see them from the Feeds tab of the record they are linked to (if a matching record was identified) ⤵

NOTE: if a matching record was not found, the responder will be shown as “Unknown”. “Unknown” responses are visible to all users from the main Feeds menu.

NOTE: if a user is the Owner of the Online Form or has been granted the permission to manage online forms in their User Role, such a user will always see all responses submitted for that Form even if the user doesn’t have access to see the linked records.

Click on a response to open it ⤵

The fields (questions) from the Form are shown on the left side the Questions with the responses on the right side Clicking on the three dots allows the response to be deleted (subject to the rights detailed below) or Forwarded. When a response is forwarded, a PDF of the response is generated and attached to the Email.

Only the Owner of the Online Form or a user with permission to manage online forms can delete the Online Form responses.

NOTE: deleting an Online Form does not also delete previous responses submitted from that Form.

The Online Form Summary gives an analysis of the performance of the Online form. It allows bulk operations via data drill down and also filtering data based on response values ⤵

You can access the Online Form Summary from Feeds by clicking “Show Form Summary” ⤵

or directly from Online Form Manager by selecting a Form and clicking the “Show Statistics in CRM” link ⤵

You can also open the Form and click on the “Results” button ⤵

The Summary tab shows a breakdown of totals and also lists of specific responders/records. ⤵

Sent is the number of Pipeliner emails that have been sent which include this specific Online Form link.

Sent Unique totals the number of Pipeliner emails that have been sent which include this specific Online Form but deduplicated by record e.g. if the same Form was sent to an individual Contact twice, this total would count it once.

Responses is the total number of records who responded.

Response rate is the percentage of Sent Unique/Responses to understand the response rate when sendng Online forms via Email.

In the Responded tab, the List View displays the records which responded to the Form.

The Sent tab is a list of records who were sent this Form via a Pipeliner email.

Sent And Not Responded tab is a list of records who were sent this Form via a Pipeliner email and where no response has been received.

Unknown Respondents is a list of responses that could not be matched to a record.

NOTE: if the same responder submits more than 1 response to the same Form, it is calculated as 1 response. Remember you can manage multiple responses in your Form Settings.

Selecting records from any list view allows you to "Export" or "Print Responses" or to “Open” to drill down into the data which then gives access to additional bulk operations. ⤵

If you Export, the resulting file will contain the Online Form field names as columns. If a field on the Form was not filled in by any respondent it will not be included in the output.

Choosing Print Responses will print the responses to a pdf file.

Use the Responses tab to view and filter responses.

Select one of the Form fields to review all responses to that particular question in the List View. You have the same options - including drill down - as in the Summary tab ⤵

Click on the Filter button to select any of the Form fields to use in filter criteria to only display the responses that you are most interested in ⤵

Online forms can be used in reporting in combination with main entities which are Accounts, Contacts, Leads and Opportunities.

Starting from an Accounts, Contacts, Leads or Opportunities report, you can choose to add Online Forms to your main entity data.

Create your report - for example, based on Contacts ⤵

Once your report is created, you can add Latest Online Form Response fields to your report ⤵

You can then change from Last Online Form Response to All Online Form Responses ⤵

Click on the gear icon and choose “All Online Form Responses”, also checking “Show only rows with related record(s)” to eliminate records with no Online Form Responses from your Report ⤵

Responses can be used in all different types of Charts ⤵

All Online Form fields are supported in Filters. Online Form filters are available for Accounts, Contacts, Leads and Opportunities ⤵

We’ve added support for Online Form as a trigger for Automatizer processes when Online Forms responses are submitted ⤵

NOTE: when you choose the primary record type, this will filter the Online Form(s) that you can choose from and will also determine all dependent actions - such as personalisation - that can be used in the process.

NOTE: an Online Form can be submitted without a linked record - i.e. responder is “Unknown”. You need to remember this when setting up your process as if you make conditions dependent on record fields or actions with personalization markers using the specific record type, the process might not run successfully.

Online Form fields can be used in setting up your Conditions.

TOP TIP: in order to prevent problems that may be caused by “Unknown” responders, you should generally include “Responded by is not empty” as one of your filter criteria in your Condition ⤵

The standard options for Actions is available ⤵

You can access Online Form Personalization markers in the actions that you create ⤵

The following Online Form personalization markers are supported:

You can access Online Forms set up for your chosen Trigger Entity as well as the Online Forms Manager from within an Email when using the Send Email Action ⤵

Your Pipeliner Admins control which individuals are able to create and edit Online Forms based on User Roles. Access the Admin Module using the App Switcher icon in the top left corner of Pipeliner and select “Administration”.

Next click on Units, Users and Roles and then the Roles tab. Choose the Role to edit and then navigate to the Tools tab. In Tools select your preferred options for Online Forms for the selected User Role ⤵

If you switch off access completely, all users based on that role:

If you leave Online Forms enabled, you can then also choose from:

In addition to your licensed users, Subscription Administrators (who are not also Users) will have access to open the Online Forms Manager via the Automation Hub but will not be able to:

Online Forms is automatically enabled for customers on our Unlimited Tier. It is available as a paid-for add-on for customers on other tiers.